Thesis for sale

What do you do if somebody else publishes your thesis as a book? This is what happened to Andrew Vonasch. Together, we investigated this new type of scam. We discovered a flood of stolen theses and the thieves’ method to publish them on Amazon and through other resellers. I interviewed Richard Elliott and sought legal advice from Ursula Cheer. We confronted IngramSpark with this scam. They removed the theses from their system but made it practically impossible to prosecute the offenders.

Transcript

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

HRI-Podcast-Episode-034-Thesis-for-sale

ISSN 2703-4054

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Flaky Conferences and Journals in Human-Robot Interaction

I recently published a podcast episode in which I had the pleasure to interview the organisers of a fraudulent conference that had accepted my nonsense paper. In the meantime, more and more invitations to flaky and potentially fraudulent and predatory conferences come across my desk. They follow the same schema as the Science Horizon Conferences. It is time to start a list. I will try to keep this list updated as new invitation to submit come in. Please contact me if you cam across an event or journal that would qualify for this list.

Flaky Conferences, Symposiums and Forums

Flaky Journals

The Science Beyond the Horizon

How do predatory conferences work?

Predatory conferences have become a global problem that plagues the scientific community. The Science Horizon Conferences claims to organize ten conference in 2022 in Europe, including the International Conference and Expo on Robotics & Artificial Intelligence. In this podcast episode I investigate this conference and its organizers Shaik Riyaz and Devasai Udarapu. My nonsensical abstract submission passed their peer review process and was accepted for a keynote presentation. I confronted Devasai with this complete lack of academic rigor in an interview. Anton Angelo and David Kaye share their view on this conference, predatory conferences in general and what impact they have on the scientific endeavour.

UPDTAE: It seems that attending a flaky conference is rather depressing.

Transcript

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

HRI-Podcast-Episode-018-The-Science-Beyond-The-Horizon-Transript

ISSN 2703-4054

Important Links

Artificial Artificial Intelligence

Did Zach pass the Turing test?

Alan Turing devised the Imitation Game as a test the intelligence of machines. This test is also used in human-robot interaction. But what happens if not a computer is trying to convince you that it is a human, but a human is trying to deceive you in thinking he is an artificial intelligence? In this episode we will discuss the Turing Test, the Zach super computer and what it means to think. I interviewed Diane Proudfoot and David Farrier about the Terrible Foundation, Turing Test and Artificial Intelligence.

The transcript of the episode is available as a PDF. You can also follow the episode with subtitles through Descript.

HRI-Podcast-Episode-014-Artificial-Artificial-Intelligence-Transcript

ISSN 2703-4054

Important Links: